In this life, we need a kind heart. But do you know why? So the wind may carry it away…”
– Trịnh Công Sơn, from the song ‘Để Gió Cuốn Đi’

Just over fifty years ago, an eleven-year-old Andrew Lam walked along a beach in Vung Tau, a coastal town south of Saigon, in a state of duress. As the son of a general in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), Andrew had led a sheltered life up until that point. He’d normally have been lolling in a hammock, reading about the adventures of Tintin, but throughout March 1975, “communist forces”—officially, the People’s Army of North Vietnam—had been marching unimpeded toward Saigon. The war that had divided the Vietnamese people for about twenty years was about to end—with serious implications for Andrew’s family and especially his father, a loyal defender of the southern republic.

• Tags: Andrew Lam, Connla Stokes, Issue 39, Vietnam